Summarize this blog with AI

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You already know this, most people are launching ads blind.

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Scrolling Instagram hoping that their a great ad shows up in their feed, that becomes the inspiration for their next best performing ad, or asking ChatGPT for ideas and wondering why their ads don't work.

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Maybe getting Claude Co-work to launch their ads, while they get a matcha tea latte.

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We know that's not you. You're using Foreplay. You're saving and sharing the incredible ads with your team.

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Like the Super Bowl ads, but why are they so hard to find?

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I don't have time to go to every YouTube channel for every brand that ran a Super Bowl ad, sit through YouTube ads, or worse go to one of those wonky YouTube channels that collects them all together and chops them up so they don't get taken down.

So like you, I'm using Foreplay. And we just launched some new features that make finding ads easier.

The Super Bowl Ads

Super Bowl ads cost millions per spot. Every second is tested and earned it's place, and it airs the one day people actually want to watch commercials. Foreplay already has them saved. From Pepsi to Pringles. All the Super Bowl ads are organized in a board.

Searchable.
Filterable. (is that a word?)

Ads in Foreplay are as shareable as it gets. So you can study how Pepsi opens with a pattern interrupt. How Pringles leads with humor (and hot girls).

Decisions made by the best marketing teams in the world playing with the most expensive impressions in the world. Fun fact, yours truly once worked on a Super Bowl ad for Booking.com. If you're thinking, okay Jack stop showing off.

What does the Super Bowl have to do with me? I don't have a $10M ad budget, and I don't even like football (don't worry, me either)

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A $10M spot and your $10,000 Facebook ad budget run on the same psychology.

The same hooks. The same reason people stop scrolling, and stop chowing down to pay attention. Sure it's a different budget, but it's the same principles. Your customers, the same customers that watched the Super Bowl, are laughing and sharing their favorite Super Bowl ads with their friends. Truthfully they should be doing that with your ads too. That would be pretty cool right? Your ROAS would look pretty cool too.
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The Skittles Super 2026 Bowl Ad

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Skittles Super Bowl ad is family friendly nonsense. They use a sound effect hook, the sound of a school bell ringing, and the swiftly delivered verbal hook which places the product in a question subliminally directed at the audience, "Do you want some skittles".

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To most marketers, this hook will seem simple and obvious. That's because it is. Skittles know who their customer is, kids at school, and they know that the question "Do you want some skittles?" is the most direct and provocative hook they could use for their Super Bowl commercial.

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This question not only places Skittles at the forefront of the ad, centering the conversation on the product, but by asking a question they're indirectly asking their audience if they want some Skittles, to which Skittles provide the answer to.
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"Yeah I do" and you do too. This is all delivered at lightning speed, in the first 2 seconds of the video, by the end of the first 3 seconds, Skittles have already introduced a pattern interrupt. The actress opens her school locker, presumably to give her co-star some skittles, but instead brandishes a Skittles Horn and blows into it to summon Elijah Wood, a woodland fairy that delivers Skittles.

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Elijah Wood flys from the woodlands into the school hallway to introduce the second product placement, Gopuff, their partner delivery app marketed to teenagers.

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There are a few intentionally designed quips, from the cheesy product placements, answering all of the teenagers objections, then a subtle redirection to a joke written for parents while still making the teenage audience feel cool, "Who is Elijah Wood?" the question every teenager unfamiliar with the Hobbit series will be asking in real-time, during the Super Bowl while watching the Skittles commercial.

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The teenagers feel cool because their ambivalence to their Dad's favorite tiny celebrity is being recognized #relatable, and the parents feel cool for knowing who Elijah Wood is because well, Gen Z know everything don't they? But do they know who Elijah Wood is?
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Elijah Wood quick fires a gag about how he has no free will #I'm14andthisisdeep, providing the perfect excuse for his comically shameless app promotion, to be met with a plain faced, stoic recognition from the teenager that everything is as it should be, teenagers in charge, adults giving them skittles at their whim.

The closing line "Less talk, more skittles" sends Elijah Woods back to the woods to deliver more skittles to all the ungrateful boys and girls.

Sound cool? It's fun for all the family, and who knows maybe it'll sell a few more bags of skittles.

Check out the full Skittles Super Bowl ad here on Foreplay

The Manscaped Super 2026 Bowl Ad

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MANSCAPED's "Hair Ballad" ad is disgusting in the best way possible.

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The hook is a clump of body hair with eyes and a mouth, singing an operatic ballad from the bathroom floor. You see it in the first three seconds and you can't look away. Most grooming ads show you the before and after, a man seemingly unappealing in his un-groomed state, suddenly the heartthrob from every cheesy 90's rom-com. Similar to the girl with glasses that no one thinks she's beautiful with the glasses on, then she takes them off and she's a whole new woman.

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The clean jaw, the confident guy, the girl on his arm. MANSCAPED shows you the life you could have if you got rid of some undesirable hair, and that's what makes this Super Bowl ad work. It's a pattern interrupt wrapped in a musical number.The ad cycles through chest hair, neck scruff, a unibrow, and the groin area, each one a different singing clump of hair mourning its removal. And every scene is a product use case disguised as a joke. That's the part most marketers miss.

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The punchline is the ending. The hair clumps sing together in this dramatic crescendo, "We won't forget your face, your chest, or your ba..." and they get scooped up with toilet paper and flushed mid-syllable. It's tongue in cheek, censored so that it's family friendly, but playfully silly in all the ways people love.

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The implied word is "balls" guys. MANSCAPED usually says it freely in their Facebook ads. But the comedic subversion of cutting the word off is funnier than actually saying it out loud, and it makes you complete the sentence in your head. Now you're participating in the ad, and you fully understand the product. Just like Skittles hook "do you want some skittles" MANSCAPED is pulling you in to actively finish the song as the videos CTA.

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You can hear muffled singing from inside the toilet pipes over the product shot. That's the post-credits gag, and it's the thing that gets this ad shared in group chats like a meme. The branding is entirely visual. MANSCAPED at the top, a clean product lineup at the end, and the tagline "MANCARE YOUR EVERYWHERE." The tagline does double the work because the whole ad just showed you chest, beard, brow, and groin, so the product showcase already happened inside the joke.

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Most brands would've killed the momentum with a spoken CTA over the final frame. MANSCAPED trusted the comedy enough to let it breathe, and that's why people share it instead of skipping it. This is a meme ad. It's low effort to understand, high signal per second, and it says something their audience recognizes as true. Every guy who's ever cleaned body hair off a bathroom floor (or begruding girlfriend who has to clean up) watches this and thinks "yeah that's how it is" but they're also having a chuckle at the same time.

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And then they send it to a friend with no caption, because the ad speaks for itself. With a spoken word CTA naration, they would have burnt that opportuntity.

The Pringles Super 2026 Bowl Ad

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The Pringles Super Bowl ads stars Sabrina Carpenter opening with "I'm so tired of boys. I need a man. Built." The payoff is immediate, someone literally builds a man out of Pringles chips. In music they call this a call and response, in advertising it's a hook, not too dissimilar from the Skittle ad.

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Most ads spend 5-10 seconds setting up context. Pringles gives you the premise, the punchline, and the product in three seconds.

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The construction shots are satisfying too. Close-up macro footage of hands stacking individual chips together. They know this is the type of content people pause and rewatch, it's ASMR for the Super Bowl audience. Then the reveal. "Pringleo." A man made entirely of Pringles, complete with a mustache and facial features.

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Romantic dinner, playing footsie with Sabrina Carpenter, I've never been more jealous of a pringle. Convertible ride where Sabrina eats a chip off his shoulder. Laughing under white bedsheets. Every single rom-com trope you've ever seen, except her boyfriend is made of potato chips. The commitment to the bit is what makes it work. Nobody winks at the camera. Nobody acknowledges it's weird. Old Spice understood this, so did Dr Squatch.

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Then they hit you with the encoded CTA on the red carpet. Sabrina in a sequined dress, paparazzi everywhere, and some random passerby bumps into Pringleo and he shatters all over the floor. This is the shock factor.

The crowd immediately drops to the ground and starts eating chips off the carpet. Sabrina looks distressed for about half a second, then she's eating them too. That's the entire product message delivered without saying a single word about how good Pringles taste. They showed you a world where people abandon all social norms to eat them off the ground. Your boyfriend just died, you're as single as a pringle and you're eating pringles off the red carpet in a sequined dress.

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Hyperbolic product truth. The chips are so good that mourning isn't even a consideration. The CTA is interesting because there isn't one. No QR code, no app download, no "visit our website." Just the legacy slogan. "Once you pop, the pop don't stop." With the Pringles mascot replacing the O in POP, which is a nice touch.

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This is a brand awareness play. Pringles isn't trying to convert you in 30 seconds, so there's no dorky QR code for you to Uber Eats pringles to your door, although GoPuff might be willing to split the cheque. They're playing on the physiological feeling of watching people eat, to serve as their CTA and they're trying to be the ad that's so funny that you send it to your group chat. Sabrina Carpenter is the vehicle for that. She's culturally relevant to the exact demo Pringles wants, Gen Z and Millennials, and she's funny enough to sell the absurdity without overselling it. Realistically, she's cheaper than Sydney Sweeney.

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Celebrity endorsement works when the celebrity actually fits the energy of the brand, and Sabrina's whole thing is deadpan humor with a wink. It's the perfect casting, if Sydney Sweeney wasn't an option. The real question is whether this moves product. The next time you're in the snack aisle and you see the red can, you'll think of Pringleo, and you'll smile, and maybe you'll buy it.

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That's the whole game. Be the funniest thing in the room, attach your brand to it, let the product sell itself later. TLDR: The best product ads don't explain why the product is good. They make the product the most entertaining thing you saw that day.

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‍The Spyder Ad Feed

I'm excited to share with you the first of our newest feature additions to Foreplay. The Spyder Ad Feed.

If you're like me, there are brands you care about that are signal, and there are brands you don't care about that are noise.

The Spyder ad feed lets you track competitors see the ads you care about when you use Foreplay.

Open the Spyder Ad Feed, see the latest or longest running ads from the brands you want to track.

Not tracking any brands?

Type a brand name, add them to Spyder and you’ll have all their active ads in front of you, ready to share with your team, plus an archive you can filter and sort for winners.

Use the Spyder Ad Feed if you want better ad ideas, faster.

Most creative strategists think great ads come from inspiration. Some random moment in the shower where the perfect hook just hits you.

I used to think this. I'd sit down to write an ad, stare at a blank screen, and wait for something to come to me.

Sometimes it did. Most of the time it didn't.

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How is Foreplay different from the Meta Ads Library?

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Foreplay's Spyder does two things, and both of them give you back an hour of time spent scrolling in the Meta Ad Library every week.

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In Spyder, ads are delivered to you, you don't have to hunt them down. Type in a competitor's brand name, or a fast growing brand and you'll see what's running right now, what hooks keep showing up, and what angles are getting tested. It's the fastest way to ask "what's working in my category right now" and get a useful answer.

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The best creative teams I know have one thing in common. They always know what's working right now, in their niche, across their competitors, and even cross market advertisers selling to the same type of customers.And they don't land at these insights after hours of doom scrolling, it's built into their workflows.

That's why Zach built the Spyder ad feed. It turns hours of research into seconds, so you can spend your energy on the part that actually moves the needle, making great ads.

Your next hook is already written for you

I was recently talking to a brand new start up, in the K9 dog accessory space.

Yeah it's a real space apparently.

He went from $10,000 a month with his Shopify store to just over $90,000 in a week.

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As you can imagine he's blown away.

He's smiling, he's flustered, he's not sure how long it's going to last and Mark Zuckerberg is his new favorite billionaire.

"We found a winning ad"

So I asked "How'd you do it?"

"We just focused on that making that first 3 seconds of the video really good"

That's it, he dialed in the hook.

He knows his ideal customer, because he is his ideal customer.

And he said exactly what they wanted to hear right at the start of the video.

If you want to see that ad, you can check it out here in Foreplay.‍

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We just launched comment section analytics in Lens.

The comment sections are a goldmine everyone walks past.

Pull up any ad in Lens and every comment is right there.

Real people telling you exactly what they care about, in their own words.

Someone says "I love my Eskiin, absolutely the BEST." Someone else asks about bath water filters. One is social proof you can build an entire ad around.

The other is a product idea your competitor probably hasn't even noticed.

Both showed up for free.

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It's like the marketing version of gold sitting on the ground and everyone is busy digging new holes with new tools.

When your ideal market and customers describe your product in their words, that's better copy than anything you'll write at your desk.

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Pull those words out, turn them into creative, and it sounds like your customer wrote it.

Because they kind of did.

Spend your time doing what matters. Making great ads.

When research takes seconds, the creative gets of your time and energy. When research takes hours and everyone's doing their own version in their own browser tabs, the actual ad making gets squeezed into whatever time is left.

Fix the creative production system and the creative gets better on its own. You're feeding it with signal instead of noise, and everything compounds from there.

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Start a completely unrestricted 7 day free trial of Foreplay today

It might not be a Super Bowl ad, but one ad can completely change your business, you just need a process that makes it happen reliably.

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